12 Hacks HGTV Celebs Use To Keep Their Home Smelling Great

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Having a home that smells good is important to how others perceive your space, as scent plays a huge role in interior design. With combined decades in the biz, your favorite HGTV stars know a thing or two about how to keep things fresh. Sure, there are plenty of simple cleaning hacks you can use to keep your home tidy, but scent is one of those tricky things that can be hard to stay on top of.

You can easily go nose blind to pet dander and musty scents can develop quickly from dirty laundry or wet shoes. The best part about these scented tips is that they aren't here to mask bad smells. Instead, the stars use them to keep their homes fresh and inviting. A few options quite literally clear the air, while others also add pops of color and personality to your space, making it an overall happier place to be. So, whether you're expecting guests or just want your home to feel like your own personal sanctuary, these HGTV-approved tips are an easy way to elevate your space. 

If there is one person who knows just how important scent is to styling a successful space, it's Genevieve Gorder. One of the original designers of "Trading Spaces," Gorder has more than 20 years of experience under her belt. She knows what you can't miss, and scent is definitely one of those things. "Every single sense needs to be addressed for us to consciously let go ... Scent is one that you have to acknowledge in the very beginning, just like light," she shared with NBC News. "Think about some of your favorite spaces in life; there's usually a scent that you can attribute to it as well," the star explained.

To do this, she uses something quite classic: Dried herbs and flowers. "I think it's about entertaining the nose with a lot of beautiful scents: oils, dried herbs, and flowers, soaps, all of these things take you to a different place like this as soon as you walk in the door," she told The Design Network on YouTube. Old-school methods are great ways to keep your home smelling fresh, so look for options like dried potpourri. You can purchase pre-made options, like the Qingbei Rina Summer Potpourri Bags, or DIY your own. Matching the scents to the seasons is a great way to go the extra mile, like cinnamon in the fall, and florals in the spring.

Jeremiah Brent is also a potpourri fan. "I've been placing handfuls of potpourri in small bowls around the house for years to keep things warm and inviting," he told Domino. And it's true, as he also shared his love for the material on Instagram. "My secret for creating sanctuary in home — buckets & buckets (more like bowls and bowls) of Santa Maria potpourri," he wrote.

Brent's suggested company, Santa Maria, has plenty of options to spice up your space, depending on your budget and preferred aesthetic. You might go for the classic potpourri box if you already have a display option in mind and just need the petals. However, the site also sells terracotta jars to store your mix, just in case. If you don't like the loose-leaf option (perhaps because you have children or maybe a curious cat who tends to knock the open containers open), but still love this classic scent, there is even the option to purchase a potpourri candle or room fragrance diffuser.

If dried potpourri isn't your thing, or you want a chance to swap out your scent a little more frequently, then the Joanna Gaines simmer pot might be for you. "A simmer pot is essentially a stovetop potpourri," she wrote on her Magnolia blog. "I love the ease of throwing these ingredients into a pot of water and letting it fill our house with clean scents all day long." Her ingredients list for a summer simmer pot includes fresh rosemary, dried lavender, and lemon slices. Plus, a few drops of both lavender and rose essential oil. You can order both together in sets like Yethious 2-Pack of Essential Oils. When mixed with a few cups of water and brought to a simmer, the smells it gives off are heavenly.

However, it's very easy to swap out a few ingredients to suit your own preferences. Maybe you prefer the sharp kick of orange to lemon, and lavender gives you a headache, so you want to use eucalyptus instead. During the winter, you can add things like cranberries or pine essential oil for a holiday twist. Yet no matter the time of year, mix and match ingredients to find your favorites. That said, a simmer pot is never a set-and-forget scent solution. Be sure to keep an eye on it (and the heat on low!), adding water as needed so it doesn't burn dry.

Vern Yip, the "Design Star" judge, agrees with Gorder about how important smell is to a space. "It's huge. Most people don't think about it because you don't really get to smell the rooms in the pretty design books," he told Mpls. St. Paul Magazine. "It's really important from a design standpoint that it's making you feel the way that you want to feel when you walk into your home." And the way that he does this, and how he encourages clients to do it, too, is with wax melts.

While most melts come in larger blocks, they typically have smaller bricks that you can break off of them. It's best to only burn one or two of these at a time, so it's easier to switch to a new scent when you feel like it. Yip also enjoys swapping out his melts. "I change mine up depending on the season," he said. "We're in fall right now, and I just changed from one of my favorite scents, White Sands, to Sandalwood. It's another part of my seasonal rotation of pillows and throws." When changing, it's easiest to let the wax melt completely, then carefully soak it up with a paper towel or pour it into a trash bag. Never pour it down the sink or into the toilet, as it will re-harden and can clog the pipes. While Yip's specific melts are no longer widely available, Better Homes & Gardens Mahogany & Sandalwood Melts are a great alternative.

Candles are a classic way to keep your home smelling great, and HGTV star Jasmine Roth is a fan. She likes to use candles to set the scene, so things always feel fresh. "Refresh your space with a new scent," she shared with readers of her blog about ways to update your home whether for your own sake or to entertain guests. "There's nothing like lighting a fresh candle to give a room a bit of ambiance."

Swapping out scents regularly keeps your space feeling curated and updated. Roth mentions that one of her favorites is a cardamom candle, similar to Viva Workshop Store's Cardamom & Cream Natural Soy Wax Scented Candle, but you can select the scent that speaks to you. In larger spaces, you can burn more than one candle at once to create a layered scent. While they don't need to be exactly the same, they should be complementary, like butterscotch and coffee, or different floral scents.

If you have parts of your home that tend to smell bad frequently, the Property Brothers recommend giving them a physical boundary to keep the stink out of the rest of the house. For example, during the "Cheer-Tastic Design" episode of "Property Brothers," the downstairs half-bath had a door that nearly opened right into the kitchen. This was a recipe for disaster, as the two places have smells that should never mix. To fix this, the team moved the door to the other end of the bathroom, ensuring it opened into an adjoining hallway instead.

This wasn't the only time the brothers opted for this kind of intervention, either. In the "Hammer, Hammer, Pedal, Pedal" episode of "Property Brothers: Forever Home", they added barn doors to a once-open room that was used mainly for exercise. "I love it. ... That's going to keep the sound in there and the smell from the kids in there as well," the client said during the big reveal. If you have the budget for a minor renovation, containing bad smells with physical boundaries is a great approach. Plus, in this case, building a sliding barn door is an easy DIY that can have long-term positive effects on the overall atmosphere of your home.

If you need a room to smell better, and faster you can reach for a PlugIn just like Egypt Sherrod. She told The Spruce that it's one of her favorite ways to make her home more inviting. She puts one right behind the front door to greet anyone who enters with a welcoming scent. However, if you don't have an outlet there, setting one up in your entryway or in the adjacent living room works similarly. To start your journey, you'll need to purchase a full kit that comes with the shell, like the Glade PlugIns Air Freshener Starter Kit. From there, you can swap out the scent as you please, as the brand also sells refills that come without a shell.

But how do you know which scent to go with? Sherrod suggests discovering your favorite aromas at the flower shop to create your own signature home scent. That way, you can see which specific flowers you're drawn to. "Go into a store, lift different ones up to smell, and create combinations that make you feel really good," she told the outlet. Then, you can use a combination of fresh flowers and floral-scented plug-ins to create a whole home aroma.

There is nothing as classically sweet-smelling as a bouquet of flowers. For Emily Henderson, this tried-and-true classic has long been one of her go tos for refreshing a space. Her reasoning for using fresh flowers is that they tend to be subtle. You can smell them, but only in the area surrounding them. Some other options, she thinks, might overwhelm a space. "Now, be forewarned that there is a fine line to how much we actually want to smell when we walk into your home. Less is more in this case," she wrote for her blog, Style by Emily Henderson. "You never want to get blasted with a smell as soon as you open the door, just a subtle undertone of a scent is much more pleasing and manageable."

If you are worried about the costs of constantly purchasing bouquets of fresh-cut flowers, consider planting a few bushes with fragrant flowers in your yard. This way, you'll have more constant access to blooms to bring inside when your space is in need of a sweet scent. "Fresh-cut flowers are obviously my favorite way to bring in a pretty smell with some of our fragrant favorites being jasmine, lilac, and peonies," Henderson continued. Other options include all colors of roses, rhododendrons, and even magnolias. Consider saving the petals for potpourri or simmer pots to make the most of the flowers in all stages.

Candles are a classic, but "Queer Eye's" Bobby Berk wants his fans to know that many of them come with a caveat: No food smells! "I'm not a big fan of home scents that smell like food," he told Page Six. "I don't need my house to smell like sugar cookies, because then it just makes me want to eat sugar cookies, and that's not healthy for anyone on a daily basis." For some, seemingly Berk included, food-adjacent scents not only induce cravings, but they can also make a space feel too sweet and heavy, instead of light and fresh.

To avoid causing dessert cravings (likely also triggered by apple pie, chocolate brownie, and other sugary scents), Berk tends to reach for herbaceous or spiced scents instead. "Bohéme [brand] candles are the best. Any candle that has any wood scent in it, like cedar or sandalwood or oak ... those are my absolute favorite home scents," he told the outlet. Boheme Wanderlust Jar Candle has notes of bergamot and cardamom, while the Maison Louis Marie – No.04 Bois de Balincourt is cedar and sandalwood, just as Berk suggests.

While Berk might not like artificial food smells in his home, Henderson can't get enough of the real deal. She swears that making her own chicken broth is a great hack for keeping your house smelling delicious and inviting because the scent tends to linger for at least a day after you're done cooking it. "One of the added benefits is that it makes your house smell so good for a full day," she shared on her blog. "I'm not sure anything smells better or more homey than roasted chicken."

While she doesn't recommend a specific broth recipe, she does say that she loves using Clean Soups: Simple, Nourishing Recipes for Health and Vitality, and within the book, there are plenty to choose from. Even if you're not the best cook, she promises they are easy. She also considers the scent one of her signature things and hopes that her children will go on to associate the smell with home. This could easily be a nice home tradition for you to start, too.

Sometimes spaces just need a little spritz to smell their best. This is why "Design Star" winner Tiffany Brooks makes her own DIY linen spray to keep her home smelling clean. "I make my own air freshener by filling an 8-ounce spray bottle with water, mixing in a couple of drops of rubbing alcohol, and then adding 10 to 20 drops of an essential oil," she told Today. "I shake the bottle and then get to work spraying my sofas, pillows, curtains, closets, and bathrooms so that everything smells great."

To recreate the hack at home, grab ljdeals 8 oz Clear Plastic Spray Bottles, which come in a pack of two. This way, you can alternate scents, depending on your mood. If you aren't sure which essential oil to choose, consider buying a pack, like the Cliganic Organic Essential Oils Set. It has peppermint, lavender, eucalyptus, lemongrass, and orange, so you don't have to pick a favorite before buying — you can test them all out. And don't forget the alcohol, which is what's really doing the heavy lifting here. It works to dehydrate bacteria's cells.

For a space to smell its best, it needs to be clean. To accomplish this, Mike Holmes recommends the

Panasonic WhisperAir Air Purifier

. This permanent fixture is a purifier that doesn't use filters, so it's virtually maintenance-free as it works to pull the stink right out of your home. He shared on his

YouTube

channel, "It's a constant interior cleaner, is what it is. It will pull the smells off your body, off the carpet, from cooking. It will constantly do this!" 

If you're worried about the purifier running up the electricity bill, Holmes told viewers that the appliance only uses about four watts of power, meaning it uses very little energy to do its job. Each unit can cover about 250 square feet of space, so you might need to purchase more than one for the best results. The Canadian contractor even shared that he personally has four in his home, placed in his living room, dining room, and kitchen. It's also noted that installing a purifier where your pet sleeps, or where your cat's litter box is, can do a significant amount of heavy lifting towards keeping your home smelling fresh. If you don't want to go the permanent route, LEVOIT Air Purifiers for Bedroom Home is a great temporary option.